"
Selma turned to the table and took up a book, dissatisfied, yet buoyed
by a new hope. She did not observe the tired lines on her husband's
face--the weariness of a soul disappointed in its most precious
aspirations.
Within the next month it happened that a terrible and unusual fatality
was the occasion of the death of both Mrs. Parsons and her daughter.
They were killed by a fall of the elevator at the hotel in which they
were living--one of those dire casualties which are liable to happen to
any one of us in these days of swift and complicated apparatus, but
which always seem remote from personal experience. This cruel blow of
fate put an end to all desire on the part of the bereaved husband and
father to remain in New York, whither he had come to live mainly to
please his women folk, as he called them. As soon as he recovered from
the bewilderment of the shock, Mr. Parsons sent for the architect who
had taken Littleton's place, and who had just begun the subservient task
of fusing diverse types of architecture in order to satisfy an American
woman's appetite for startling effect, and told him to arrange to
dispose of the lot and its immature walls to the highest bidder. His
precise plans for the future were still uncertain when Selma called on
him, and found comfort for her own miseries in ministering to his
solitude, but he expressed an inclination to return to his native
Western town, as the most congenial spot in which to end his days.
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